GPS satellite in Earth orbit.
The $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that was voted out of the Senate on August 10 has no funding for strengthening the Global Positioning System (GPS) to make sure that Americans can navigate without getting spoofed. The House should correct the Senate’s omission.
With $50 billion over the next decade allocated in the bill for cyber-attacks and climate change, it makes sense to designate $1 billion of this amount to the Transportation Department to reinforce GPS.
In the last two decades, GPS has become essential foundational technology for many industries. Without accurate GPS, daily life would become almost unrecognizable. Imagine not having cell phone service, or the ambulance to your house being delayed while the driver consulted a road map and hunted for house number.
Malicious interference with GPS, an invisible utility paid for by the federal government, is increasingly common. GPS satellites could be damaged by electromagnetic storms or hostile military action.
Today GPS outages and gaps are real, not hypothetical. Naval ships operating in the Persian Gulf have been lured into Iranian waters and seized through GPS spoofing.
But it is not just nation states that can interfere with GPS. Inexpensive hardware to do so is available online. In America, free GPS signals incorporated into thousands of systems and applications are easily hacked and spoofed. GPS signal disruptions have, among other things, caused passenger aircraft to nearly crash, vehicles using driver assist to be forced off highways, and enabled a wide variety of criminal behavior.
The Coast Guard collects reports of gaps in GPS coverage all over the world. Examples in the last months include ships in the Suez Canal and Gulf of Malta, surveyors in Galina, Alaska, and a driver in Emporia, Virginia.
That is why three separate laws, most recently the Frank LoBiondo Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2018, gave the Transportation Department the job of securing GPS, subject to congressional appropriation. Because no funds were appropriated, the Department couldn’t proceed.
The Transportation Department is in charge of civilian GPS because of its importance to transportation. GPS is the software behind infrastructure’s hardware. About 900 million GPS receivers are in cell phones, car navigation systems, emergency vehicles, commercial trucks and buses, and railroad operations. Over 100 million vehicles have navigation systems, and ships, planes, and drones use GPS for navigation.
America has more funding for infrastructure than do many other countries, but others are taking the lead on complements to their GPS systems. An expenditure of $1 billion over 10 years would enable the Department of Transportation to put in place complements to GPS to make it secure—as other countries are doing.
China’s challenges to American leadership in technology and world affairs include GPS. Chinese users can get GPS-like services from its own company, Beidou; from other Chinese satellite systems; from eLoran, a terrestrial system; and via local broadcast as part of 5G deployment.
Russia, South Korea, Iran, France, and Saudi Arabia are not far behind China, and also use terrestrial broadcasts to complement satellite-based GPS-like services.
A growing chorus of leaders all over the world is expressing concern about the national security implications of the GPS technology gap between the West and other adversary and competitor nations. Lord West of Spithead, who was cybersecurity advisor to former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, told the BBC last month, “My concern is that those people who are not friends with us are looking at ways to knock out satellite communications.” Lord West has concluded that the UK has no back-up plan.
Sadly, the United States does not have a back-up plan either.
Federal promises to implement a complementary system to work with GPS go back to 2004. But despite a law mandating establishment of such a system by December, 2020. Congress has never funded the effort.
Now is the time for Congress to appropriate the funds. This year the Transportation Department published a report on technologies that can back up GPS. The Department is in a position to proceed with stress testing and an acquisition strategy, whether a public-private partnership or government-provided services.
China’s authoritarian government has an enormous edge over America in its backup of GPS. When it comes to interference with GPS, America loses and China wins. So too do other countries hostile to America.
Congress has a chance to put America back in the win column on GPS. It’s past time it did so.
